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Jessica Ridgeway case: Sigg would be rarity among killers if convicted

Dismemberment 'very unusual, very striking'

By Electa Draper The Denver Post

Posted:
10/28/2012 10:33:15 PM MDT

Updated:
10/28/2012 10:35:32 PM MDT

DENVER -- "Precocious" doesn't sound like the right word. Yet it means someone has developed certain capabilities or proclivities at an unusually young age.

The killer of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway dismembered her. That would make 17-year-old murder suspect Austin Sigg, if convicted, a rarity -- even among serial killers.

Little has been released by authorities about the details of the crime, but the singular fact of dismemberment is telling, experts say.

"The amount of violence -- the pathology in that -- is remarkable at any age, but especially for a teen," said retired FBI profiler Gregg McCrary. "That's very unusual. That's very striking."

Sigg is charged with one count each of abduction and murder and with one count each of attempted abduction and attempted murder of a 22-year-old woman May 28 at Ketner Lake.

But to find killers who dismember their victims -- for purposes other than trying to hide the body or to conceal the victim's identity -- one has to look to the lists of the nation's more than 200 convicted serial killers starting in the 1800s.

Comparing a few online databases turns up just more than a dozen identified U.S. serial killers who dismembered victims, and they were typically much older than 17.

About 20 teen serial killers have been convicted in the U.S., and only a few dismembered a victim.

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Some killers dismembered or mutilated victims to explore the body or for other psychological gratification, although such people aren't common even among serial killers, said Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist and head of Threat Assessment Group in Newport Beach, Calif.

"Dismemberment is a rarity for killers of every age and background, as it is time-consuming, hard work and distasteful to most humans," Dietz said.

Yet some killers, he said, do it to experiment with the body, harvest an anatomical trophy -- making sexual use of a part of the victim's body -- or imitate a real or fictional killer who "has caught their fancy."

"I will not be surprised if we one day refer to this latter phenomenon as 'the "Dexter" effect,' " Dietz said, referring to the Showtime cable-television series about a police crime analyst and serial killer who kills other killers.

Of the serial killers who have dismembered or mutilated bodies, only a handful started as teens. The short list includes Jeffrey Dahmer. He was 18 when he killed the first of his 17 victims -- he buried the first in his family's backyard. But dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism would come later with other victims.

"It is unusual for juvenile murderers to have that kind of (dismemberment) profile," said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist and author of the book "Extreme Killing."

And there is no increase or trend in such cases, he said.

"Juvenile violence is typically episodic, spontaneous. They act impulsively without appreciating the impacts of their crime on their victims, families or themselves -- more often with guns than with hands," Fox said.

If convicted, Sigg, who turns 18 in January, would become the exceptionally rare teen killer who mutilated or dismembered his first victim, a little girl who lived in his Westminster neighborhood.

"Nobody just wakes up and does this one day," McCrary said.

There must have been earlier evidence, said Roger Depue, a retired chief of behavioral science for the FBI who teaches about violent crime behavior at the University of Virginia and through his company, the Academy Group Inc.

"It usually first involves cruelty to animals," said Depue. "This murder (of Ridgeway) was so violent, so bizarre. The literature shows disturbing patterns of violent fantasies begin at an early age."

While little has been officially released about Sigg, classmates at Arapahoe Community College said he expressed an interest in mortuary and forensic sciences and has studied crime-scene investigation, mechanics of death and body decomposition.

Fox said high schools and middle schools across the country teach classes on crime-scene investigations as a way to interest young people in science. He compares it to showing porn to interest them in film arts.

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